Friday, December 17, 2010

Saturday, December 11, 2010

I love this time of year. People are very busy buying and receiving presents during Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa. In our class we are creating a special present to give to our parents (shhh! It's a secret!).

Thinking of this reminds me of my favorite gift. When I was 14 years old my mom gave me her high school I.D. bracelet for Christmas. I liked it, but really I wanted something new, like a swatch watch

or an album.

I put the ID bracelet in my jewelry box and there it sat gathering dust for a few years. When I was a senior in high school, I gave the bracelet to my best friend, as a way of saying that we would be friends forever. After a while, my friend and I lost touch; we went to college, moved to different parts of the world, and got married. She kept the bracelet with her. It reminded her of me even though we never got to see each other. Many years passed, and one day when I was feeling very sad my friend brought me my mom's ID bracelet. I was shocked. I had completely forgotten the bracelet existed. I was amazed at how beautiful my mom's name looked engraved in the shiny silver. It was the perfect gift.

Friday, December 3, 2010

We had a very busy day. We read stories, took our spelling test, sang songs with Mr. B, continued our holidays around the world unit (we found Israel on the map and ate some gelt.) Then we finished our stained glass snowflakes and even had enough time for PDR. Whew...

Monday, October 18, 2010

We have been practicing reading to ourselves for a few weeks now. Some important rules about reading to yourself are:

Read in your head.

Read the whole time.

Stay in one place.

No talking.

Today was very exciting because we introduced "Buddy Reading." Students could choose to read with a classmate, read to themselves or read with one of our stuffed buddies. They did an amazing job and had fun too.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Today in class we read a wonderful blog post from Mrs. Yollis about how to compose a quality comment and watched the video they created. We learned that in a quality comment there should always be a capital at the beginning of your sentence and punctuation at the end of your sentence. Also, you should only use one exclamation point if you want to exclaim something and you should try to end your comment with a question. If you end your comment with a question, you will keep the conversation going.

Check out this perfect example of a quality comment from Hannah in Mrs. Yollis' class.

"Dear Mrs. Levy,My name is Hannah and I am a student in Mrs. Yollis' class. Congatulations on your amazing swim! 58 degrees sounds very cold! I went to San Francisco two years ago with my family and friends. I loved it! My favorite part was going on the cable cars. We went on Thanksgiving and all the holiday decorations were up. Ghirardelli square looked beautiful and festive.My question is, how long did you have to train for the swim? I love swimming but I don't think that I would be able to do the Alcatraz swim any time soon!!Sincerely,Hannah"Very impressive Hannah and all of Mrs. Yollis' class. Thank you for all of your commenting tips.

Busy day for the busy bees! Please remember that homework is due tomorrow. Thanks for all of the classroom donations. I will be sending out volunteer info. over the weekend, once I compile my email list.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Mrs. Levy, Mr. Levy and Mrs. McEvoy swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco on Saturday. The day started out cold and rainy but fortunately the rain stopped in time for the race.

We jumped off of the ferry at Alcatraz Island and swam the 1.5 miles. The water temperature was 58 degrees (the same as the temperature as the water at our beaches.) All three of us successfully crossed and enjoyed the fabulous swim! We celebrated by enjoying a great day in the lovely city of San Francisco.